


something, sitting on your bed

by Neffectual



Series: fhtagn [2]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Cthulhu Mythos, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 09:27:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8322643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: Dean loves to collect spooky shit, and Seth's never really thought about it before. He doesn't believe in that stuff. But a particular statue makes him struggle to remember that.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Duckay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duckay/gifts).



Seth had never quite been comfortable with Dean’s collection of haunted items. Sure, he didn’t believe a word of it, had never been the type to jump at shadows or flinch away from scary movies – he’d been goth-punk before it had been emo, for fuck’s sake, he’d painted his teenage bedroom black and owned a black leather trench coat for a while. He wasn’t afraid of anything, other than maybe injuring himself in the ring and not being able to wrestle again. But Dean’s collection of weird shit bought off eBay gave him the creeps, and he couldn’t shake it, even when he was upstairs in Dean’s bedroom, and the room full of supposedly dangerous possessed items was locked downstairs, far away from the two of them.  They’d managed to put his betrayal of The Shield behind them, but Seth wasn’t quite sure he was at the point where he could demand his boyfriend throw out a room of collected items just because he didn’t like them.

“Seriously, what do you think they’re going to do to you?” Dean asked, laughing at Seth’s face as he unlocked the door and headed into the inner sanctum of overpriced tat the superstitious bought of the internet. “It’s just a load of creepy dolls and broken mirrors now, the spirits are gone.”

“As if they were ever there,” Seth muttered and edged into the room carefully, as if he was waiting for something to leap out at him – which he totally wasn’t, because he wasn’t that sort of guy. Dean was unpacking something new, and pulled out a strange statue, misshapen and twisted, crumbling in some places, and it seemed… strangely wet? It looked like it was made from four different animals and a human being, and that all of them were screaming in pain, and Seth stiffened, looking away from it. It put his teeth on edge, but Dean looked at it like he was delighted, and Seth permitted himself a shudder, heading out of the room as soon as he could make it look like he wasn’t scared.

“You locked the door, right?” he whispered, disturbing the quiet still of their bedroom.

“You locked the door, Seth, after dinner,” Dean muttered back, drowsily.

“Not the front door,” Seth said, even quieter than before, because what if it heard them, and tried the door? “The other door.”

Dean’s laugh was gorgeous like that, all sleepy chuckle as he pulled Seth closer and wrapped an arm around him.

“What, you afraid the spooky things will get you?” he mumbled, and kissed Seth until his mouth was pliant and slack, and he stopped worrying about the door downstairs.

 

In the morning, the statue was sitting on the kitchen counter, and every glass in the room was smashed, shards of sharpness glittering on the floor that Seth nearly stepped on, in his groggy state, before Dean pulled him back against his chest.

“Shoes,” he said, grimly, “and a shirt. Maybe gloves. I don’t want to feed this thing any of our blood if I can help it.”

For the first time, Seth wished he paid more attention to the stories Dean spouted when he was in the process of ordering these things, when he was learning the history of the items he was collecting. Normally, Seth just tuned him out and stopped listening when Dean got onto the more obscure items, not particularly wanting to hear about grisly murders when he was trying to eat breakfast, but this time, he wished he’d listened. What had this done to the previous owners?

“Shoes, Seth,” Dean said, sharper this time, with an edge of desperation in his voice, and Seth realised he’d been about to step onto the glass again, gaze fixed on the statue in the middle of the kitchen island. He hadn’t even realised he’d moved.

When he re-joined Dean, in shoes and a bulky sweater, clutching a dustpan, he found the other man muttering quietly to himself.

“Should’ve bolted it into place, should’ve sorted that out the first night….” And Seth found himself not wanting to know, not wanting the answer as to what Dean was going to do to keep them safe. This wasn’t a threat, not yet, just a display of power – Seth knew how horror movies worked, there’d be these first, and then the death of animals in the house, and then before they knew it, they’d be dead. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t shaking.

“I’m not picking Kevin up from kennels,” he said, instead, and Dean looked up and nodded, before sweeping more shards of glass into a pile. The statue was nowhere to be seen, but a pair of rubber gloves sat in the sink, dripping ominously with something greenish-black that oozed when Seth looked at it. “I don’t believe in this shit, but I’m not risking him if you’ve done something stupid.”

“Probably just wanted a little adventure,” Dean said, and shrugged. “It’s never done this before, not in anything I’ve read. Weird, huh?” His hands shook, and Seth pretended not to see.

“We’re only home for a week more,” he replied, and told himself he could stick this out for a week, “And then we’re back on the road. What are we going to do, come back to the house burned down?”

Dean looked up at him with wide eyes, mouth curled into a half-mocking smile.

“Don’t give it any ides.”

 

It was ridiculous to be afraid, Seth knew, because he didn’t believe in these things, he wasn’t superstitious, not any more than anyone else whose job relied upon being fast and lucky and skilled and alert all the time. Okay, so maybe he was more superstitious than the usual, but not compared to other wrestlers. But that thing in the locked room gave him the fucking creeps, and he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it, even when he was upstairs, even when he was out of the house. It was consuming his every waking moment, and in his dreams, he knew it would trail behind him, chasing.

 

The next morning, it was on the bottom stair when Seth went downstairs early, planning on heading to the gym. He looked at it, and the damp spot it was leaving on the carpet, the black-green ooze sliding off it with a scent like rotting leaves and mildew, something that hadn’t been touched for too long, and under it all was the scent of decaying seaweed, like the stench of an over-populated wharf on a hot day. Seth looked at it, and he could almost swear it looked back, even though all the eyes on it were fixed in agonised horror. He carefully headed back up the stairs, backwards, not breaking eye contact with it, and stood at the top of the stairs where he could still see it. He’d seen episodes of Doctor Who, because Dean was nothing if not bizarre in his television choices, and absolutely not because he, himself, had a soft spot for the British show.

“Dean?” he shouted, and hoped his lover would wake up before he had to take his eyes off the horrifying thing. His eyes watered from trying to look at it, but he wasn’t about to give it a chance to sneak closer to them. “Your statue made a jailbreak again.”

“Fuck!” Dean skittered out of the bedroom, tugging sweats on, and Seth took a deep breath in, wishing he could turn around, drag his lover back to bed and do terrible things to him – no, not terrible, that seemed wrong to think with the thing staring back at him. “What did it… oh shit, and it’s in the way of the fucking gloves and everything.”

In the end, Seth sacrificed a bath towel for Dean to wrap the monstrosity in, and he carried it back to the previously locked room. He didn’t seem too bothered by his statue going walkabout, but Seth had pretty much had as much as he was going to take at this point.

“I want it out, or I go the fuck home and face what I left in my refrigerator last time I was there,” he said, calmly. “That’s less bothersome than fucking masonry moving around the house at night. I didn’t sign up or this bullshit, and I’m sure as fuck not going to put up with it.” He scrubbed at the spot on the carpet for an hour, but the greenish-black ooze didn’t seem to want to shift, and in the end, it was Dean’s carpet, not his, and he gave up, throwing the gloves and sponge out with the kitchen garbage, dragging the large plastic sack to the sidewalk for collection. He wasn’t going to keep any part of it in the house if he could help it.

Dean went out an hour after dark, and Seth heard him rummaging in the trash. Good, Seth thought, vindicated, get the damn thing out of the house, get in compacted in the trucks in the morning, and it wouldn’t bother anyone else ever again.

“I locked the door,” Dean said, as he climbed into bed after a longer than usual shower, the sounds of scrubbing echoing. “It’s gone.”

Seth wondered, and in his dreams, heard slick, wet, awful sounds, chasing him along a sea bed he couldn’t seem to find an end to. When he woke up, the statue was back in Dean’s spooky little room, with the door ajar. He supposed it was better than the alternative.

 

The last night they were home, Seth clung to Dean, twitched at every sound, and barely slept. They were due to fly out to the UK the next day, heading off for an overseas tour, and Seth almost didn’t care if they came back to a house or a burned out shell, if they found a wreck, because he was looking forward to some time away from Dean’s room of bullshit and the fucking awful statue that wouldn’t leave them alone. He woke some time before the alarm, which was set for 4am, and after 1am, which was the time it had been when he’d last checked, before he slipped into a fitful slumber.

“Dean, it’s on the bed,” he whispered, horrified, feeling a weight on his feet, like he couldn’t move them to kick it away, could only lie there and feel the slick yet sticky substance seep through the blankets and onto his feet. It ached, like he’d put his hands in bleach, not quite burning, but letting him know that it could be burning, if it wanted to.

“Wstfgl,” Dean said, and turned over, snuggling closer to Seth’s rigid body. He could feel the thing moving up the bed, crawling closer, and that should be impossible, because it didn’t have limbs, not like real things had limbs, but he could feel it moving closer and closer, until it sat on his right knee, and the pain was incredible, an intense burn of agony that made him scream and thrash, finally kicking it away.

The statue striking the wall woke Dean, who ripped the sheets off the bed, bundled Seth into the bathroom, and grabbed at the evil little thing, wrapping it in the soiled sheets before he got dressed.

“I’m taking it somewhere else,” Dean said, solemnly, and kissed Seth softly through the gap Seth had left, not fully closing the bathroom door over the whole way. “Scrub that off your skin, babe, okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t ever want to hurt you.”

“I’m okay,” Seth mumbled, eyes downcast as Dean pressed another kiss to his cheek. “I just want it gone, please, Dean.”

“Anything you want, Seth,” Dean replied, leaning in for one more kiss, which Seth willingly gave him. “Anything for you. Forgive me?”

“Always,” Seth said, and shut the bathroom door, locking it for good measure, before he headed for the bath.

 

They had a few days of peace, and Seth was finally not jumping at shadows, was finally able to sleep now that he was on another continent, and the fucking statue had been taken out of their house. He stood by what he’d said at the beginning, that he wasn’t afraid of anything, not really afraid of what the statue could do to him. Dean had laughed when he’d said that, reminding him that he was only just sleeping.

When he went out into the arena in Dublin, everything felt right, normal, calm. Everything felt good, and he knew he was going to put on a hell of a match – no pun intended – with Kane. He was halfway through the match when he saw it, just out of the corner of his eye, tucked up by the barricades and staring at him. Staring at him, with eyes and no eyes all at once, watching him as it silently dripped greenish-black ichor onto the floor, and no one else seemed to be able to see it. It caught his eyes, and his ankle buckled, and there was a sense of pain, and then his leg wasn’t responding to him, wasn’t coming back, he couldn’t shake it off like it had just gone numb through impact, everything from the knee down wasn’t responding. He finished the match. He always finished the match, no matter what happened, and he didn’t spot the statue as he won, or as he was helped out by officials.

“Dean, it’s here,” he panted, as he came across his lover backstage, as the medics fussed around his useless leg. “It’s here, it followed us, it knows we’re here, it followed us!”

“Oh, I know,” Dean said, grinning wide and sharp, and stepped closer, greenish-black dripping from his hands. “I helped it get to you. Enjoy vacating your title, traitor.” He dropped the little statue in Seth’s lap, and turned to walk away. “How does betrayal feel, Seth? Hurting enough yet?”

Seth’s heart burned like stars over a deep, deep dark ocean.


End file.
